It’s not every day you get to ask pioneering robot startup founders about their journey. The Robolution panel at the Pioneers Festival in Vienna comprised Rodney Brooks from Rethink Robotics and previously iRobot, Steve Cousins from Savioke and previously Willow Garage, Noland Katter from Anybots, and Walter Wohlkinger and Michael Zillich of Blue Danube Robotics, a new startup from Vienna University. Between them the panelists have started or spunoff well over 15 robotics companies, started the first robotics venture fund and been hugely influential in shaping the current rapidly emerging robot startup space. ‘Fast, cheap and out of control’ was Brooks’s 1987 insight into robot exploration of the solar system, but is very apt today, as drivers like open source software, affordable COTS and crowdfunding expand possibilities.

Chris Anderson, CEO of 3D Robotics, former Editor-in-Chief of WIRED and author of The Long Tail, Free and the newly published Makers, speaks about the new industrial revolution, how easy it is these days to start a hardware company and how he’s putting it into practice with 3D Robotics. (question at 36 mins)

Bob Christopher was CEO of Ugobe, the company that made Pleo, the robot dinosaur, one of the first successful consumer robotics products. Greg Appelhof is the CEO of TRG, a global retail company specializing in emerging technologies.

Together they have written “The 2 Year Itch”, a paper advising hardware and robotics consumer technology companies on the finer points of surviving in the retail market.

Consumer robotics had a watershed moment just a few days ago, when Autom, the robot weightloss coach, was launched at Dublin Web Summit. I’m very excited to open our Robot Startup Series with an interview with Dr Cory Kidd, the founder of Intuitive Automata and maker of Autom, which is now being produced by PCH International.